"Freak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Besancon?" asked pretty Madame de Chavoncourt. "Could no one tell him how little chance a stranger has of succeeding here? The good folks of Besancon will make use of him, but they will not allow him to make use of them. Why, having come, did he make so little effort that it needed a freak of the President's to ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... anything queer is going to result? You don't suppose she has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?" ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... the dominant race of Pellucidar. By a strange freak of evolution her kind had first developed the power of reason in ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Varley usually got fair prices for his pictures, but the expenses of a numerous family kept him miserably poor. Then he took to "judicial astrology," and eventually made it a kind of second profession. Curious to say, some of his predictions came true, and thanks to this freak of fate he obtained more fame from his horoscopes than from his canvasses. He "prognosticated," says Burton, "that I was to become a great astrologer." Straightway Burton buried himself in astrological and cabalistic books [56], studied the uncanny arts, and became learned ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... that they have done us. Does not such an agreement subsist between a man and his monkey or his parrot?... If you take a young provincial to the menagerie at Versailles, and he takes it into his head for a freak to push his hands between the bars of the cage of the tiger or the panther, whose fault is it? It is all written in the silent compact, and so much the worse for the man who forgets or ignores it. How I could ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... much disposed to laugh at this freak of the old man's fancy, but to her surprise Humfrey coloured up, and looked so much out of countenance that a question darted through her mind whether he could have any such step in contemplation, and she began to review the young ladies of the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beautiful snow, Filling the sky and the earth below! Over the house-tops, over the street, Over the heads of the people you meet, Dancing, Flirting, Skimming along. Beautiful snow! it can do nothing wrong. Flying to kiss a fair lady's cheek; Clinging to lips in a frolicsome freak; Beautiful snow, from the heavens above, Pure as an angel ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... very pleasing to the stiff, etiquette-loving fine lady, and it was without any great surprise that we heard, some time afterwards, of the marriage being broken off, in consequence, it was said, of some wild freak of Doughby's. We were asking one another for the particulars of this rupture, which neither of us had heard, when the Kentuckian made his reappearance in the cabin. He had changed his dress, and, taking him altogether, was by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... "A freak cannon-ball, made at the Forge and Manor of Greenwood, Virginia, 1778. Presented in 1889 to Lord Roberts by General George Bolling Anderson, Governor of the State ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... have hitherto obtained, but, as we have explained, a study is not complete if it confine itself to these two answers. When we know the law and the cause of an object submitted to our study, we further look for the end designed. This is no freak of our fancy, but the direct result of the constitution of our understanding. The universe is the creation of God. What is the design of the creation? I answer: the design of the creation is the happiness of spirits. Nature is made for the spiritual beings to which it offers the condition ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... is sleeping! Is it but a freak of the lamplight, or is there a smile upon his lips? Eustace takes the lamp and bends over him to see; and as he bends he hears Frank whispering in his dreams his mother's name, and a name ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... mind. In short, to speak plainly, he was mad, and deserved a strait-waistcoat as richly as any straw-crowned monarch in Bedlam. A single instance, in my opinion, fully substantiates this. I allude to his absurd freak at Frederickshall, when, in order to discover how long he could exist without nourishment, he abstained from all kinds of food for more than seventy hours! Now, would any man in his senses have done this? Would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... tough game, anyway you play it, if you are disposed to be fat. No man living, who isn't a freak, can persist always in one diet. Nor can any man who has anything else on his mind be always exercising—especially after he has reached forty years of age, when there are so many better things ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... to tell that one evening, a great many years ago, when Dr. Hugh Blair and I were sitting together in the pit of Drury-lane play-house, in a wild freak of youthful extravagance, I entertained the audience prodigiously[1095], by imitating the lowing of a cow. A little while after I had told this story, I differed from Dr. Johnson, I suppose too confidently, upon some ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... certain sort of pedagogue sometimes throws off, for the consolation of a recently-caned boy; and that Sterne's vanity, either then or afterwards (for it remained juvenile all his life), translated it into a serious prophecy. In itself, however, the urchin's freak was only too unhappily characteristic of the man. The trick of befouling what was clean (and because it was clean) clung to him most tenaciously all his days; and many a fair white surface—of humour, of fancy, or of sentiment—was ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... freak of fortune which has sent men from a little island in the Atlantic to administer the land of the Pharaohs," remarked Cecil Brown. "We shall pass away again, and never leave a trace among these successive races who ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you promise me, upon your honor, that when this freak of yours is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled to your satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice implicitly, as that of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... smoke. Crawling up from the deck, sheltered from the wind by the mast, by some freak it took form and visibility at that height. It writhed away from the mast, and for a moment overhung the captain like some threatening portent. The next moment the wind whisked it away, and the captain's jaw returned ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... of this adventure as a most remarkable answer to prayer. He had prayed for Suleiman before starting, and had also asked for guidance for himself, and God heard him. It has sometimes been represented as a mad freak on Gordon's part to put himself into the lion's den in this way, but it was nothing of the kind. Suleiman was in revolt, supported by a splendid army. Gordon was absolutely at his mercy, for he could not rely on his troops. It was ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... welfare of the empire of which they are the guardians. But if, from whatever cause, they are unwilling to recall the noble lord, then I implore them to take care that he be immediately ordered to return to Calcutta. Who can say what new freak we may hear of by the next mail? I am quite confident that neither the Court of Directors nor Her Majesty's Ministers can look forward to the arrival of that mail without great uneasiness. Therefore I say, send Lord Ellenborough back to Calcutta. There at ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... despair about his mistress, who has taken a freak of——. He began a letter to her, but was obliged to stop short—I finished it for him, and he copied and sent it. If he holds out, and keeps to my instructions of affected indifference, she will lower her colours. If she don't, he will, at least, get rid of her, and she don't seem much worth keeping. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... now—indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she bore her aunt's putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the Chase without the least grumbling or pouting. It must be, after all, that she had set her heart on Adam at last, and her sudden freak of wanting to be a lady's maid must have been caused by some little pique or misunderstanding between them, which had passed by. For whenever Adam came to the Hall Farm, Hetty seemed to be in better spirits ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... a voice called out, "Of course his bills are worth four hundred pounds; but, my good sir, four hundred pounds to a man in my position is not worth the getting. Why, I've given four hundred pounds for a freak of my girl Sarah! Is it right, eh, Jezebel? She's a good girl, though, as girls go. Mrs. Lionel Crofton, of the Crofts, Sevenoaks, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... there was a scrubby growth of weeds or lichen upon it, which against the sun looked for all the world like the wool on a colossal negro's head. It certainly was very odd; so odd that now I believe it is not a mere freak of nature but a gigantic monument fashioned, like the well-known Egyptian Sphinx, by a forgotten people out of a pile of rock that lent itself to their design, perhaps as an emblem of warning and defiance to any enemies ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... fleck flick cake sock deck meek flock pack yoke slick shock poke track hack dock snake neck stuck clack sleek strike crack freak pluck truck stroke brake drake shake black struck sneak spoke tweak ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... in the rock. Inside of this spiral staircase, instead of concentric circles which twist around with each complete turn, the involutions become wider as they proceed, in such a way that the bottom of the pit is three times as large as the opening. Is it an architectural freak, or did some reasonable cause determine such an odd construction? It matters little to us. The result was to cause in the cistern that vague reverberation which anyone may hear upon placing a shell at his ear, and to make you aware of steps on the gravel path, murmurs ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... quarter of a century, the writing of many books, and the building up of a justly great and world-wide reputation between the two writings) strikes me as a singular, and, in a way, pleasing literary coincidence; singular, as a freak of subconscious memory for words, pleasing, as a verification in mature life of the writer's comparatively youthful observations of natural phenomena. I wonder if the author, or any others among his almost innumerable readers, have chanced ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... it enlarged into a lofty, spacious room remarkable for nothing except being of an extraordinary size, and faintly lighted by an opening in the top which permitted a few rays of light to penetrate and soften the gloom below. This part of the cavern was evidently a natural freak of nature, for they found no traces of hewn rock or precious ore. From the opposite side of the cavern they found a low opening which, on entering, they gradually descended winding round in a curve, the passage enlarging ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... she said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down, with the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak might be to fly ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man, his soul, his life, everything. Well, in the old days thoughts and ideas commenced to make themselves felt in me, to crop up in my work. I would start on a picture with a clear settled design; when it was finished, I would notice that by some unconscious freak I had introduced a figure, an arabesque, always something which made the whole incongruous and bizarre. I discovered the cause during the week after I received your last letter. The thoughts, the ideas were yours; better than ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... tops of embankments, and on the rafters or beams of old buildings. The nests are made of mud, moss and grass, lined with feathers. The four or five eggs measure .75 x .55. Occasionally, eggs will be found that have a few minute spots of reddish brown. Freak situations in which to locate their nests are often chosen by these birds, such as the brake beam of a freight car, in the crevices of old wells, hen houses, etc. The birds are one of the most useful that we have; being very active and continually on the alert for insects ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... dear, no; whoever said there was? By the way, is not this freak of yours of going out into the roads to smoke, as you say, alone, rather a slight on your guest? Here is Mr. Wilde; how very amusing! we all seem to be drawn out towards ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... the comfortably-upholstered bench on the dais of the Audience Hall, didn't look particularly regal. But then, to a Terran, any of the kings of Ullr would have looked like a freak birth in a lizard-house at a zoo; it was hard to guess what impression Harrington would make ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... river-man, Iberville himself, with others, rowed the subaltern back almost to the side of the admiral's ship, for by the freak of some peasants the boat which had brought him had been set adrift. As they rowed from the ship back towards the shore, Iberville, looking up, saw, standing on the deck, Phips and George Gering. He had come for ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... by the rest of the herd. Another moment and they would have plunged into the open gate, when suddenly they wheeled round, re-entered the forest, and in spite of the hunters resumed their original position. The chief headman came forward and accounted for the freak by saying that a wild pig[1], an animal which the elephants are said to dislike, had started out of the cover and run across the leader, who would otherwise have held on direct for the corral; and intimated that as the herd was now ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... semicircular canals of the ear well developed. It has a strong tendency to waltz round and round in circles without sufficient cause and to trip sideways towards its dormitory instead of proceeding in the orthodox head-on fashion. But this freak is a very educable creature, as Professor Yerkes has shown. In a careful way he confronted his mouse-pupil with alternative pathways marked by different degrees of illumination, or by different colours. If the mouse chose compartment A, it found a clear passage direct to its nest; if it chose ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... is a good boy and a quiet one; given to mischief like other boys of his age, doubtless, but always amenable. What can have possessed him to behave in such a wild manner I cannot conceive, but it seems to me that it was but a boy's freak." ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... in his. As he took it, by a curious freak of his brain, there flashed into his mind the memory of the day when, by the side of this fragile white little hand lying in his, Hetty, laughingly, had placed her own, broad and firm and brown. The thought of that ...
— Hetty's Strange History • Anonymous
... It seemed a wondrous freak of chance, so perfect, yet so rough, A whim of Nature crystallized slowly in granite tough; The thick spires yearned towards the sky in quaint harmonious lines, And in broad sunlight basked and slept, like ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a freak. It was a policy. It was in perfect keeping with an amazing attack made by the Republican press of Paris not long afterwards upon the then American Minister in France, Mr. Morton, now Vice-President of the United States, for giving a dinner ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... Remember the difficulty you had in extorting from me what was supposed to be the truth, remember the threats which made me compliant. I am a victim of circumstances. Whatever I confessed is false. No man of sense can discover the stamp of probability in my statements. In a freak of desperation I bore false witness. Tell my father that his cruelty is more sure to rob him of his daughter than her seeming transgression. Already I know not what I should believe, the past escapes my memory, my confidence begins to totter. If it is too much to ask for justice, then I beg for mercy. ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Boulanger when he was a political recluse in Jersey; and one afternoon he drove me to the charming villa the General had occupied, situated in an ideal spot on the coast. The villa was most solidly built, and of picturesque architecture—the freak of a rich Parisian merchant, who had spared no pains or money over it. The work both inside and out was that of the best artists Paris could supply. It was magnificently furnished—a museum of beautiful objects, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... scientist and profound scholar—had a queer little place at the edge of the town where he raised wonderful bees, and grew freak squashes inside glass molds in every ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... he turned on his radio and cried for help. It was a bare hundred miles or less to that wonderful world below, but there was the Heaviside layer, and the weak signals beat but feebly against it. All that seeped through by some instant's freak of transmission was a fragment of incoherent babble to reach the uncomprehending ear of an Arkansas ham and give that gentleman uneasy sleep for some ...
— Far from Home • J.A. Taylor
... star! I never saw it lovelier than now It rises for the last time. If it sets, 'Tis that the re-assuring sun may dawn. [As he prepares to ascend the last tree of the avenue, TRESHAM arrests his arm.] Unhand me—peasant, by your grasp! Here's gold. 'Twas a mad freak of mine. I said I'd pluck A branch from the white-blossomed shrub beneath The casement there. Take this, and hold ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... banged, reloaded, banged again, reloaded and banged yet again. I took up a stick and presented it—bang! With amazing verisimilitude Beppo rolled over—shot through the heart. Really, for a moment I had a mad apprehension that in some occult way, some freak of hypnotic suggestion, I had actually wrought the child harm. I stood there breathlessly triumphant and wondering whether it was now my business to rush in and scalp the defenceless prisoners. I became aware of a head and ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... bookman's trivial adventures and discoveries. They would be worse than trivial indeed if they led him to forget or ignore that by which Goldsmith earned his immortality, or to regard Traherne merely as a freak in the history of literary reputations, and not primarily as the writer of such words ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the commons. Richmond again became master of the ordnance and a little later re-entered the cabinet. Dundas was treasurer of the navy. Pitt's acceptance of office was regarded by the opposition as a "boyish freak"; his ministry was "a mince-pie administration which would ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... rascallion, That old Pyg — (what d'y' call him) malion, That cut his mistress out of stone, Had not so hard a-hearted one. 330 She had a thousand jadish tricks, Worse than a mule that flings and kicks; 'Mong which one cross-grain'd freak she had, As insolent as strange and mad; She could love none, but only such 335 As scorn'd and hated her as much. 'Twas a strange riddle of a lady: Not love, if any lov'd her! Hey dey! So cowards never use their might, But against such as will not fight; 340 So some diseases ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... and by that time had made sufficient progress in their simple movements to begin to feel that there was after all something more in it than they had fancied. For the first hour it had seemed to them a sort of joke—a mere freak on the part of their young chief; but they were themselves surprised to find by the end of the day how rapidly they were able to change from their rank two deep into the solid formation, and how their spears rose and fell together at the order. Beric bade them ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... partnership full of perplexity to the working member of it, the ordinary forensic creature of senses, passions, ambitions, and self-indulgences, the eating, sleeping, vainglorious, assertive male of common experience—and it is not to be denied that it has been fruitful, nor again that by some freak of fate or fortune the house has kept a decent front to the world at large. It is still solvent, still favourably regarded by the police. It is not, it never will be, a mere cage of demons; its walls have not been fretted to transparency; no passing eye can detect revelry behind its decent stucco; ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... deep creases between his eyebrows, and put back his saddle. "You can do as yuh like," he said, coldly. "I'm going to stay and go to meeting this afternoon, according to her invite. If it's going to make that poor old freak feel any better thinking she's a real missionary—" He turned and walked out of the stable without finishing the sentence, and the Happy Family stood quite ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... some definite object in view," said Harley, "or it may have been merely a freak of his client. Is there anything characteristic about ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... seen. "Then, Paddy," exclaimed Jack, clutching his rifle, "let us have a cruise on our own hook. You remember the prize you took among the Ionian Islands, old fellow?" How merrily they laughed at the recollection of that early freak of theirs. Paddy, of course, was delighted to join in any scheme of Jack's. They could not tell in which direction the frigate had gone. They, at a hazard, steered to the southward. They had a good ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... and that other, which, by some freak of Providence, has found its way to Philadelphia, have backgrounds which carry our imagination very far. Is this primordial ice, with its livid steel-blue shadows, the stuff out of which the gods make other planets than ours—dead planets, ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... freak! I get away with it because I'm passably good-looking and know how to dress, and do what I please by the divine right of—well, of just doing it. But, even so, a lot of the men are rather afraid of me in their hearts. They suspect the bluestocking. ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... hermitage of Arishtanemi, son of Kasyapa. And saluting that great Muni, so constant in austerity, they all remained standing, while the Muni, on his part, busied himself about their reception. And they said unto the illustrious Muni, "By a freak of destiny, we have ceased to merit thy welcome: indeed, we have killed a Brahmana!" And the regenerate Rishi said to them, "How hath a Brahmana come to be killed by you, and say where may be he? Do ye all witness the power of my ascetic practices!" And they, having ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in women's clothes, as well as in men's. But fashion changes too rapidly to make value of material always wise expenditure for one of slender purse. Better usually have two dresses, each cut and made in the whim of the moment, than one which must be worn after the whim has become a freak. In men's clothes the opposite rule should be followed since good style ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... the events that led up to Raleigh's Virginia patent may not be out of place in a bibliographical Life of Hariot. The patent was no sudden freak of fortune but was the natural outgrowth of stirring events. Had it not been allotted to Raleigh it would doubtless soon after have fallen to some other promoter. But Raleigh was the Devonshire war-horse ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... where the spoils party had been particularly busy; and though the Company Officer was full six foot, he could only just see over the top; as a fire step it was useless to any one but a giant from a freak show. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... me they do," he replied, "but the more he says it the less I believe him. Miss Flora, the fate of all my uncle holds dear is hanging by a thread, a spider's web, a young girl's freak! If ever she gives him a certain turn of the hand, the right glance of her eye, he'll be at her feet and every hope ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... perceive thou knowest me not. You and I were rivals in our pursuit—the hand of Melissa. Whether from freak or fortune, the preference was given to you, and I retired in silence. From coincidence of circumstances, her father has now been induced to give the preference to me. My belief was, that Melissa would ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... church was laid low. In the roof two thin arches of the groining remain, marvellously. One remembers this freak of balance—and a few poor flowers on the altar. Mass is celebrated in that church every Sunday morning. We spoke with the cure, an extremely emaciated priest of middle age; he wore the Legion of Honour. We took to the trenches again, having in ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... you do not know. Now listen. You have to make, within the next few minutes, a great decision. Very likely, after you have chosen, you will curse me all your days. It was a freak of fate which brought us together. But I must say this. You are the sort of man whom I would have chosen, if any measure of choice had fallen to my lot. And yet," he looked around, "I am almost afraid to speak now that I have ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... thought, a petty pique, Enwraps in gloom, or bursts in storm; She questions all that love may speak, And weighs its tone, and marks its form, Or yields her frailty to a freak ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... giant coal scuttle, sir," said Carrick the trite. The description was apt, for the freak of nature which confronted them. Towering high above its neighbors this mountain was unusual. Some outraged Titan in his ire had, in some long-forgotten aeon, apparently seized and turned upon its head the top-heavy crest, whose form roughly speaking was of a reversed ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... A freak of fancy set him wondering where and when in the future a beautiful girl with red hair might march along some splendid aisle. Never mind! He became aware ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... release a story saying the baby was a freak. The kid was born at home, you see. The only other person who saw her, besides me and my wife, was this doctor we had. And he died a couple of ...
— Get Out of Our Skies! • E. K. Jarvis
... McClellan replied: 'Why, Mr. President, according to Military Science it is our duty to guard against every possible or supposable contingency that may arise. For example, if under any circumstances, however fortuitous, the Enemy, by any chance or freak, should, in a last resort, get in behind Washington, in his efforts to capture the city, why, there the fort is to ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... freak is of course not historical. The tale- teller introduces it to enhance the grandeur and majesty of Harun al-Rashid, and the vulgar would regard it as a right kingly diversion. Westerns only wonder ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the operator, a capable and long-suffering young woman, came over to complain to the doctor that she really found it impossible to carry out the duties of her office, if the feeble-minded Delilah Freak was to be incarcerated only six inches distant from her ear. It seems that Delilah spends her days yelling at the top of her lungs, and Miss Dennis states that she prefers to take telegraphic messages down in competition with the mail steamer's ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... at that old picture; got up, as you say, on a chair to do so. Wasn't that the freak of an idle man, wandering, he hardly knows why, from room to room in ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... occurrences are registered—there is a kind of "wild justice" even in smoking-room disclosures. But whatever our bad or good fortune may have been, it is not to be supposed for a moment that any of us enjoy such an enchanting revelation as comes to a young girl who, by nature's kind freak, has been made beautiful. Daisy Medland was radiant as she turned from Norburn's pale thoughtful face and careless garb to Dick Derosne, the outward perfection of a well-born, well-made, well-dressed Englishman, bowing, smiling, and debonair. Daisy liked Norburn very much—how ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... the name indicates, consists of two sets of planes, one above the other. There are some triplanes, but they have not been very successful, and there are some freak aeroplanes built with as ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... sympathy and help he gives folks. These crack specialists, the young scientific fellows, they're so cocksure and so wrapped up in their laboratories that they miss the human element. Except in the case of a few freak diseases that no respectable human being would waste his time having, it's the old doc that keeps a community well, mind and body. And strikes me that Will is one of the steadiest and clearest-headed counter practitioners ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... to stare at any woman who crosses their path. Why should not a woman go to the City? She has as much right there as man, and yet if she is in the least degree superior to the flower girls (?) who surround the Royal Exchange, she is looked on as a freak of nature, a positive curiosity, and is followed by every pair ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... of solicitors, Messrs. Freak and Able, had put in a defence on Bosinney's behalf. Admitting the facts, they raised a point on the correspondence which, divested of legal phraseology, amounted to this: To speak of 'a free hand in the terms of this correspondence' is ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his mistake, was fain to make his retreat; but we would not hear tell of it, till he came in, and took a dram out of the bottle, as we told him the not doing so would spoil the wean's beauty, which is an old freak, (the small-pox, however, afterwards did that;) so, with much persuasion, he took a chair for a gliff, and began with some of his drolls—for he is a clever, humoursome man, as ye ever met with. But he had now ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... with another question. Why is a two-headed calf? And my own answer to this is that it is a freak. And so I answer your question. I have this other-personality and these complete racial memories because I am ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... not mean that we should adopt freak styles. There is no necessity for that Clothing need not be a bag with a hole cut in it. That might be easy to make but it would be inconvenient to wear. A blanket does not require much tailoring, but none of us could get much work done if we went around Indian-fashion ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... that I have, in the fourth chapter, by some odd cerebro-mechanical freak, substituted the name of my Aunt Martha for that of my Aunt Millicent, another sister of my father, whom he has not, I believe, had occasion to mention in either of his preceding books. My Aunt Martha is Mrs. Weir, and ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... himself at the controls. Max is a small dark man with angry eyes and the saddest mouth I've ever seen. He is also a fine pilot and magnificent bacteriologist. I wanted to slap him. I hate these professional British types that think a female biochemist is some sort of freak. ...
— Competition • James Causey
... returned to Val de Cire, and her husband, who had not expected her for some time, blamed her for a freak. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... for Warde Hollister I'd take him into my patrol. I've got every kind of a freak in there now except ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... queer freak of fate, Thad Brewster and his comrades of the Silver Fox Patrol find themselves in somewhat the same predicament that confronted dear old Robinson Crusoe; only it is on the Great Lakes that they are wrecked instead of the salty sea. You will admit that those Cranford ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... by its fight with the crocodile; and coming straight from the encounter, had in some way connected the children with its conquered enemy. Murtagh's shout might have freshly incensed it; or, what to Saloo seemed more probable than all, the seizure of the child might be a wild freak suddenly striking the brain of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... will you? You're a sport all right, Will, only it happens that your tastes run in a different direction from mine. Don't knock my love of fair play, and I won't laugh at your wanting to snap off every living thing you see, to make up a freak collection." ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... might be. And they soon after reached the hermitage of Arishtanemi, son of Kasyapa. And saluting that great Muni, so constant in austerity, they all remained standing, while the Muni, on his part, busied himself about their reception. And they said unto the illustrious Muni, 'By a freak of destiny, we have ceased to merit thy welcome: indeed, we have killed a Brahmana!' And the regenerate Rishi said to them, 'How hath a Brahmana come to be killed by you, and say where may be he? Do ye all witness the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... writes like one accustomed to good European society, who has read books and collected stores of information, other than could be perused or gathered in the places and amongst the rude associates he describes. These inconsistencies are glaring, and can hardly be explained. A wild freak or unfortunate act of folly, or a boyish thirst for adventure, sometimes drives lads of education to try life before the mast, but when suited for better things they seldom persevere; and Mr Melville does not seem to us the manner of man to rest long contented with the coarse company and humble ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... was wheeled out, and he was strapped, or harnessed, into his seat. "Was the machine a 'freak' monoplane?" we wondered. ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... I am a Spanish gentleman from Santiago, that you are an English friend of mine, and that we have for a freak come over here. I speak the Spanish language perfectly, of course, while you speak it with an English accent. Leave all to me. I'll ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... apartments. It was a painful and difficult business to ascend that thin and yielding ladder in such a confined space, but Racksole was managing it very nicely, and had nearly reached the top, when, by some untoward freak of chance, the ladder broke above his weight, and he slipped ignominiously down to the bottom of the wooden tube. Smothering an excusable curse, Racksole crouched, baffled. Then he saw that the force of ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... tribe, for it has no locomotion, stability, or endurance, neither goes to pasture, gives milk, chews the cud, nor performs any other function of the horned beast, but is a mere creation of the brain, begotten by a freak of the fancy and nourished by ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... or where the sovereign privilege is at least largely circumscribed by the parliamentary power. It is different in an Empire like Russia, with its murderous dynastic antecedents. There, the personal character of the princely personages is of the utmost importance; for a youthful freak or hideous trick may point to a coming horrible event. In olden times, previous to the Tatar dominion, Russia passed through the so-called Appanage Period of Separate Principalities, when the Empire was actually partitioned. The feuds which then tore the various branches of the Rurik ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... minutes a week! When Jerry's around. How on earth he puts up with her I can't understand. She follows him about like a little dog. Listens to him. Behaves herself. But the moment he's gone—Poof! back she goes to her old tricks. I tell you she's a freak!" and Alaric dismissed the matter, ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... the possession of a dog of doubtful ancestry and antecedents, but reputed to be intelligent. It was called "Little Willie" because of its marked tendency to the predatory habit. His other leading characteristic was an inordinate craving for Punter's "Freak" biscuits. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 15, 1919 • Various
... we attempted to climb to the mouth of the crater. The mountain sheered down at an angle of from seventy-five to eighty degrees, and its smooth, slippery sides afforded absolutely no foothold. Anything more barren than this rocky freak of nature it would be difficult to conceive. Only a few tufts of wild herbs were to be seen upon the whole island, and these seemed ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... Angelique!" Bigot thought she contemplated some idle freak that might try his gallantry, perhaps his purse. But she was in earnest, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... beginnings that cannot be classed under any of the above heads. Some of them, much like the "freak" leads that may be seen in many newspapers of the present day, may be called free beginnings for want of a better name. These free beginnings are quite effective when properly handled but the novice must use them with fear and trembling. They may be witty or ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... tiny dwarf! Neither within nor without a freak exhibition had I seen so small a human being! A kind of supernatural dread gripped me by the throat at sight of it. As it turned with animal activity and bounded into my bathroom, I caught a three-quarter view of the creature's swollen, ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... a freak, or I tired myself last night, or I want to make a sensation—according to whom you ask,' said ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... saw that old Katchiba was in a great dilemma, and that he would give anything for a shower, but that lie did not know how to get out of the scrape. It was a common freak of the tribes to sacrifice the rain-maker should he be unsuccessful. He suddenly altered his tone, and asked, "Have you any rain in your country?" I replied that we had, every now and then. "How do you bring it? Are you a rain-maker?" I told him that no one believed in rain-makers in our country, ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... it was said, than the income of any other living man. In the next place he spent it very splendidly. There were no entertainments given in London during the years 1909, 1910, and 1911, equal in extravagance to those which Conroy gave. He outdid the "freak dinners" of New York. He invented freak dinners of his own. His horses—animals which he bought at enormous prices—won the great races. His yachts flew the white ensign of the Royal Yacht Squadron. His gifts to fashionable charities were princely. English society fell at his ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... before you a grinning gargoyle head, to which he will give in an instant more a pair of spider legs, and then, with one roll, stretch it out into a crocodile, whose jaws seem so near snapping that you involuntarily draw your chair further back. Next, in a freak of ventriloquism, he startles you still more by bringing from the crocodile's mouth a sigh, so long drawn, so human, that you really shudder, and are ready to implore him to play no more tricks. He knows when he has reached this limit, and ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... to conclude that the Odyssey is written by a woman. A girl, such as Nausicaa describes herself, young, unmarried, unattached, and hence, after all, knowing little of what men feel on these matters, having by a cruel freak of inspiration got her hero into such an awkward predicament, might conceivably imagine that he would argue as she represents him, but no man, except such a woman's tailor as could never have written such a masterpiece as the Odyssey, would ever get his hero into such an undignified ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... sensuality and malevolence, and he makes his ominous appearance in history as a Caligula, a Domitian, a Nero. More fit for a madhouse than a throne, his advent is the signal of a despotism controlled by no guiding principles, but given over to that spirit of freak and mischief which springs from the union of the boy's brain with the man's appetites; and his fate is to have that craze of the faculties and delirium of the sensations which he calls his life abruptly closed by suicide or assassination: by suicide, when he has become ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... a queer freak of our human nature, that those who use the Bible in a dead, foreign language, unsuited for use in our public schools, should call our English version of the scriptures a sectarian book, and then oppose its ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... cunningly, with the trunk of a tree for the support of the bed, by Odysseus (odyssey, XXIII. 177-204), is, according to Noack, an exception, a solitary freak of Odysseus. But we may reply that the thalamos, the separate chamber, is no freak; the freak, by knowledge of which Odysseus proves his identity, is the use of the tree in the construction of the bed. [blank ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... my father's son in their hands without winning something out of him, and I saw by what passed the other day that thou and thy father would stand by me, hap what hap, and I'll never embroil him and peril the lady by my freak.' ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... foolishly sensitive about," said he. "A childish freak—playing with edged tools, you know. A boy-playmate chopped it off by accident: I cut his head open with his own hatchet, and made an idiot of him ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... in northern New England, why should not a poet or a painter come to his full growth here just as well? Yes, but if the gorgeous tree-flower is rare, and only as if by a freak of Nature springs up in a single spot among the beeches and alders, is there not as much reason to think the perfumed flower of imaginative genius will find it hard to be born and harder to spread its leaves in the clear, cold atmosphere ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... not already been in such mortal terror of the consequences of Joe's mad freak, I should have laughed to see the wayfarers as they skipped out of the course of the runagate, not one of them aware as yet that it held human contents, nor guessing that the end might ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... brought dismay to the negro, the carpet-bagger, and the scallawag of Ulster. A peculiar freak of weather in the early morning added to their terror. The sun rose clear and bright except for a slight fog that floated from the river valley, increasing the roar of the falls. About nine o'clock a huge black shadow suddenly rushed over ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... isn't romance. I think Mr. Cameron is a freak, anyway. But it's all amusing, and I hope you'll be at ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... out, to recognise how much of the charm of these tales of our childhood can be traced to the eternal truths that lie hidden in them, or to perceive that the shining fairy concealed beneath the frequent guise of some crabbed old woman, is no mere freak of fancy, but the symbol of a reality, less exceptional perhaps amongst us poor mortals, than amongst the fairies themselves, who, finding their presence no longer needed, vanished from our earth ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... lay there in the grass, wet-cheeked but no longer sobbing, listening to the sound and wondering that he had been able to hear it on the beach of Ringmanu. Some freak of air pressures and air currents, he reflected, had made it possible for the sound to carry so far. Such conditions might not happen again in a thousand days or ten thousand days, but the one day it had happened had been the day he ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... weather-beaten cheek. Miss Henderson again noticed the observant curiosity in the old man's eyes. Everybody, indeed, seemed to look at her with the same expression. As a woman farmer she was no doubt just a freak, a sport, in the eyes of the village. Well, she prophesied they would ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... disastrous results. It is unsafe to play with the emotions of a person who is simply labelled, often mistakenly and insufficiently, in your mind as belonging to a class, and possessing the characteristics of that class. There is always the chance that some old strain of tendency, some freak of heredity, may develop in the way which is most of all dangerous to you and to your career. For you cannot play with a woman's physical nature without touching, how remotely soever, her spiritual constitution as well; and, as Browning assures us, it is indeed "an awkward thing ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... hinterland of the country round Colville and Okanagan. Yet nothing occurred to cause any excitement in Victoria. There was a short-lived flurry over the discovery in Queen Charlotte Islands of a nugget valued at six hundred dollars and a vein of gold-bearing quartz. But the nugget was an isolated freak; the quartz could not be worked at a profit; and the movement suddenly died out. {4} There were, however, signs of what was to follow. The chief trader at the little fur-post of Yale reported that when he rinsed sand round in his camp frying-pan, fine ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... ambition of so vast an enterprise. He professed that the fugitive Adminius had ceded to him the kingship of the whole island, and sent home high-flown dispatches to that effect. He had no fleet, but drew up his army in line of battle on the Gallic shore, while all wondered what mad freak he was purposing; then suddenly bade every man fill his helmet with shells as "spoils of the Ocean" to be dedicated in the Capitol. Finally he commemorated this glorious victory by the erection of a lofty lighthouse,[126] probably at the ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... great work of any sort which owes nothing to the historic guild which does that sort of work? Is there one great man in history who gave to the future without getting anything from the past? The bare scientific fact is that no man escapes the tuition of society. The crank does not escape. The freak does not escape. They miss the highest traditions of society only to become victims of lower traditions. Whether such a man have genius or the illusion of genius, it is his tragic fate to have the best that he can do lie far below the best ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... British embassador to take the matter in hand, and he did so with such effect that the prisoner was liberated. He had been treated with some severity at first, but he was young, and the government was persuaded to look upon it as a youthful freak. Brandon's powerful influence with the British embassador obtained his ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... marry him? Ah, say why! How was her fancy caught? What was the dream that he drew her by, Or was she only bought? Gave she her gold for a girlish whim, A freak of a foolish mood? Or was it some will, like a snake in him, Lay a charm ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... (2) Perhaps a freak of the wind-yet perhaps a sign of remembrance,— This fall of a single leaf on the water I pour ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... rain prevented a contemplated progress to Hosho-ji, he sentenced the rain to imprisonment and caused a quantity to be confined in a vessel.* To the nation, however, all this meant something very much more than a mere freak. It meant that the treasury was depleted and that revenue had to be obtained by recourse to the abuses which Go-Sanjo had struggled so earnestly to check, the sale of offices and ranks, even in perpetuity, and the inclusion of great tracts of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... threw a swift glance about him, to measure his surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for his ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... not rather a sudden freak of Raffaello Cellini's to leave Cannes? We all thought he was settled for the winter there. Did you know he was ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... clarioned Mr. Cassidy as the first skylarkish pair showed in the doorway. His manner was drolly that of a showman exhibiting a rare freak, ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... of ice: An allusion, apparently, to the ice-palace built by the Empress of Russia, Catherine II, "most magnificent and mighty freak. The wonder of the North," Cowper called it. Compare Lowell's description of the frost work with Cowper's similar description in The Task, in ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... and applause at this witty freak, while the girl passed the keen blade, and the impassive rider jingled in his palm the increasing hoard of silver buttons. He eased her to the ground with both her hands full. After whispering for a while with a very strenuous face, she walked away, staring haughtily, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... enable him to delay it grievously. We divided seventeen times, and between every division this vexatious Irishman made us a speech of apologies and self-condemnation. Of the two who had supported him at the beginning of his freak one soon sneaked away. The other, Sibthorpe, stayed to the last, not expressing remorse like Shaw, but glorying in the unaccommodating temper he showed and in the delay which he produced. At last ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan |
